TV with feeling

Sunday

May 27, 2007 at 12:01 AMMay 27, 2007 at 1:39 PM

Watching sports could be a whole lot different soon. A Westerville company is developing ButtKicker Live! -- a device that turns low-frequency audio into vibrations, allowing fans watching at home to feel movement in real time.

Watching sports could be a whole lot different soon. A Westerville company is developing ButtKicker Live! -- a device that turns low-frequency audio into vibrations, allowing fans watching at home to feel movement in real time.

And if a Westerville company is successful, fans watching live sports on television will feel it, too.

It's the ButtKicker, a motor that attaches to seats and floors, and transfers low-frequency audio through the body, allowing people to "feel" sound.

The product, by the Guitammer Co. Inc., has been around for seven years and is used by scores of musicians during live performances. And it's making its debut in new places, including this weekend at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

But a new initiative, announced this month, could rocket the company to new heights.

The company is developing ButtKicker Live!, which will allow customers watching live sporting events on television to feel physical movement from the events in real time.

"We think we've got a viewer enhancement that this generation is going to say, 'Gotta have it,' " said Mark Luden, president and chief executive of Guitammer Co.

When the company was founded by Ken McCaw in 1990, it was marketing a different product to guitarists. The company later developed the ButtKicker, used by some members of the Rolling Stones, Shania Twain, Little Richard and dozens of other performers during their concerts to allow them to feel the bass.

In recent years, Guitammer, which employs 11 people at its Maxtown Road operation, focused on home theater and gaming. The company doesn't disclose its sales, but now that it has sold tens of thousands of products, ButtKicker Live! is "the natural evolution," Luden said.

"We've proved the concept."

ButtKicker Live! is "an idea I think could really take this company to the next level," said Walter Doyle, a central Ohio venture capitalist who has invested in Guitammer Co.

The next big thing

ButtKicker Live! is expected to be tested and rolled out in central Ohio this year. The company introduced the product this month at the Cable Show in Las Vegas, an annual industry trade event.

ButtKicker Live! will rely on sensors at sporting events -- placed underneath a wrestling ring, for example -- to capture vibration and impact. Viewers with a ButtKicker device attached to their couch or chair then will be able to feel it, Luden said. The product will be available for cable, satellite, over-the-air or Internet television.

Luden speaks of his product like a preacher trying to convert the uninitiated to a high-tech religion.

He often compares ButtKicker Live! with TiVo, the digital video recorder that he says "fundamentally changed how people interact with TV."

Luden says interest in expensive, fancy televisions is high, and sports represent the biggest driver in the adoption of high-definition entertainment. He thinks those factors, in turn, will propel sales of ButtKicker Live!

John Mansell, a sports-media researcher based in Virginia, confirms the role of sports in the adoption of HDTV. He pointed to the fact that initial high-definition programming is heavily tilted in favor of sports channels.

It's no surprise, then, that Guitammer will introduce ButtKicker Live! with Columbus Sports Network, a new central Ohio television network. The details still are being worked out.

Columbus Sports Network is looking for ways to distinguish its programming, said John Ertmann, president and general manager. One way is by providing hyperlocal content, and another is by using technologies such as ButtKicker Live!

ButtKicker Live! will "make the viewer experience significantly better and drive advertising dollars," Ertmann said. The latter is because people at home will be more likely to continue watching programming with unique qualities.

The product could have particular potential for sports such as NASCAR and the NFL, both of which have strong fan bases and premium television channels, Ganis said.

That fits with the company's vision of ButtKicker Live! as an enhancement for other subscriptions, such as pay-on-demand video.

One potential barrier for the product would be the rights-holders to sporting events, which control transmission from events, Ganis said. Also, the fact that ButtKicker Live! requires an additional piece of equipment in consumers' homes could be a roadblock to broadcasters' acceptance.

But research shows that consumers are increasingly investing in home theaters. Thirty-six percent of U.S. households owned a home-theater system as of January, a 20 percent increase from 1998, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.

Perhaps more important for the Guitammer Co., among consumers with home theaters "audio quality of the system often is just as important as the video experience," a survey by the Consumer Electronics Association found.

"I think it is a limited but well-heeled audience," Ganis said of ButtKicker Live!

The original ButtKicker

ButtKicker Live! is the latest initiative from the Guitammer Co., but other recent projects also have raised the Westerville company's profile.

The original ButtKicker is part of Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Launch Experience, a $60 million launch simulation that opened this weekend.

The idea was to create a "sensory illusion" that gives the feeling of being launched into space, said Bob Rogers, founder and chairman of BRC Imagination Arts, the California company that designed the simulation.

ButtKickers are used in flight simulators and in a "pre-briefing" room, where images of a launch are shown and ButtKickers "shake the dickens out of the floor."

Rogers also used ButtKickers as part of a show at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill.

"It's just a very, very ingenuous product," said Rogers. "It's become one of the standard things in our tool kit that we look to create compelling experiences."

The Guitammer Co. has already "proven a great number of things that most small companies never achieve," said John O. Huston, a founding member of Ohio TechAngel Fund and an investor in the Guitammer Co.

The company designed, patented, manufactured and sold tens of thousands of its products, Huston said. It successfully outsourced the manufacturing of some components, which is a minefield not many small companies can navigate, he said.

The Guitammer Co. also has multiple applications of its product and multiple revenue streams, Huston said.

"It's a very nice success story for us."

mcuret@dispatch.com

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